My ex's mum has suddenly passed away just two days ago before Mother's Day. Immediately I remember that she kissed me outside the subway station at Covent Garden in London. Then we said goodbye, it was the early summer of the year of 1998.

I have earlier set up a poll on my homepage asking people guessing their way of passing away in the future. Most of them chose dying of aging. I believe it's more like an expectation rather than a guess.

When we are getting older and older bad news unexpectedly comes more often and often such as someone got brain tumour or beast cancer, some other killed himself because of the depression, someone died of accident etc. From time to time I hear this from my old lost friends and unseen online friends, as if an alarm ringing more and more often from somewhere not far away, as if I know someone is stuck in the lift. This is a distance that I could hear but not see.

However I know that I would be able to see that distance by my eyes one day. As close as the alarm in the car outside my home, as close as the fire alarm installed at home, or even as close as the alarm clock by the bed, but that is not the time we can adjust and set up. And nobody would choose to stare at the second hand going round and round on the clock. But we can listen to the every single jump of the second hand in the silent night as if the clip-clop coming by.

At that time, I could see the death or the life by closing up my eyes. The faces of the dead are getting clearest in my memory and imagination, my uncle who died in an accident, my aunt who committed suicide, my unseen online buddy, or the superstars or the crowd who died in the tsunami. Perhaps they had just read the morning paper before they became part of the evening news themselves. It is just like my grandma who passed away ages ago would never imagine the appearance of mobile phone and Internet in the world. Perhaps you or I would not be able to see the sunshine or the raindrop in next year, or next month or even next week, as if someone takes his departure all in sudden with one way ticket in hand.

Until I sleep then I would dream of them very often. The dead, they are always so vivid as if they were really alive in my dream or I where in their world. And the boarder in between the life and the death would be unclear only in the dreamland.

But I still prefer to wake up. I enjoy the real feeling of being alive. However, my mum is getting old.

I am always afraid I would hear that alarm ringing one day because of the sickness or accident or anything.

Today is Mother's Day, I greet my mum wishing her to have a long life but actually I just want my mum would dress the best, eat the best, because I am not by her side.

* The Mother's Day in Norway is on the second Sunday in February.